F5 Buys Rival Swan Labs

F5 Networks announced yesterday that it will acquire its rival wide area network (WAN) optimization and application acceleration vendor Swan Labs Corporation in a $43 million deal.

The acquisition, which F5 says which will be completed this fall, will give F5 access to Swan's WANJet solution, providing office-based and application-specific network performance optimization across the WAN, as well as the WebAccelerator wb application optimizer. F5 says that it plans to combine Swan's technology with its own to provide an integrated framework extending application, security and performance enhancements to branch offices and remote users across the WAN.

Earlier this year Juniper Networks jumped into the WAN optimization fray with its acquisitions of Peribit Networks and Redline Networks, Cisco Systems added FineGround to its stable and Citrix Systems made a similar play by snapping up NetScaler.

The Swan Labs acquisition, slated to close next quarter, adds the vendor’s WAN optimization and acceleration appliances –- including technology for branch offices and application-specific optimization -- to F5’s traffic management portfolio.

"The acquisition will accelerate the execution of our strategy to deliver application acceleration and WAN optimization for all applications and users," F5 Networks President and CEO John McAdam said in a statement. "A distinct competitive advantage for us is F5's advanced Traffic Management Operating System that creates a shared application and network services framework that will enable Swan Labs' solution to integrate well into F5's architecture. No other vendor in the market has this powerful capability."Swan Labs CEO Andrew Foss praised the synergy of the two companies, saying that Swan was a "perfect fit" with F5. The company was singled out as a "visionary" in Gartner's most recent Magic Quadrant for Web-Enabled Application Delivery.

The cash transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including acceptance of employment with F5 by certain Swan Labs employees, according to a statement from F5, Seattle, Wash.

Shares of F5 closed up 39 cents at $42.25 Tuesday following the announcement. Swan Labs, San Jose, Calif., is privately held.